


Your Entire World

by UnchartedCloud



Series: A Soft Epilogue [2]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Other, Secret Santa, holiday fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 08:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5659177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnchartedCloud/pseuds/UnchartedCloud
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little holiday LaFerry for the Tumblr Carmilla Secret Santa!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Entire World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blairryface](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blairryface/gifts).



The average North American spends up to forty-seven percent of their waking hours daydreaming.

Your current mind wandering comes to an abrupt end as the metallic _crash_ of a mixing bowl against the counter snaps your attention back to the present. You blink, looking up from the can of baking powder sitting on the opposite end of the table to find an annoyed looking Perry raising expectant eyebrows. She stands with arms akimbo in front of the mixer, the crashed bowl in question just over her shoulder; judging by the puff of white powder on the front of her apron, she’d purposefully slammed it the moment she noticed you spacing out. You blink at her, surprised and…kind of confused.

“Have you even heard a word I said?” she demands. You shrink a little in your seat and offer a sheepish grin.

“Were…you talking about sodium bicarbonate washes possibly solving a problem in the lab?”

She’s not amused by your response - it shows in the roll of her eyes and the distressed sound that leaves her. “Honestly, LaFontaine!” Your heart gives a little squeeze. _LaFontaine_. Not Susan. Every time the right name leaves her lips, even when it’s in anger, you swear you can breathe a little easier. “I’m being serious! The entire Baranowski family will be in from Poland and if you can’t keep them straight–”

“Aunt Anne and Uncle Dewey and Cousins Zack, his fianceé Heidi, and Martha and Caleb,” you recite. Now that you pause for more than five seconds, you can dredge up the words she’d been saying while you’d been thinking about chemical baths. Shifting in your seat, you return your attention to the wrapping paper and little gifts piled in front of you. “I’ve got it, Perr. They were there a few years ago, back in high school. I remember them.”

She sighs and folds her arms over her chest, her annoyance bearing out for a moment longer in the form of a _Look._ Ultimately though, she relents. The oil is heating, and there is dough that needs to be shaped.

The average university student can experience up to three times more mood variability when under stress than under normal circumstances.

“It’s - been a long time, is all,” she says, setting the bowl she’d slammed under the mixer and turning to retrieve a second bowl from the fridge. Silas may not be the most attentive university, but the administration knows how to keep the floor dons happy. As soon as you and Perry moved in, they outfitted the dorm’s kitchen with all manner of fancy baking appliances. There was no indication that it had been done _for Perry_ , per se, but undergraduate students aren’t exactly known for copious amounts of baking - and the possibility nearly has your mind running off again as you imagine all the toys they’d give _you_ if _you_ were floor don. But Perry continues, and her voice wrangles your attention. “Bubbie and Aunt Anne haven’t spoken since that year, and this is the first time we’ve been able to convince them to be in the same room together. But Bubbie is already annoyed because she doesn’t want her grandson to be marrying a ‘ _shiksa_ ’” – she puts the word in distressed little scare-quotes with her fingers– “and - it just - it has to be _perfect_ , okay? Everything has to be _perfect,_ or else–”

“Perr.” She turns at her name, and you hold up the little plastic box you’d been positioning on the paper to show her the action figure inside. “How can anything go wrong when you’re giving gifts as awesome as _this?_ ”

Her lips press together as though she disapproves, but you see something relax a little in her shoulders. “I’m serious.”

“So am I.” You set the toy down and push away from the table. Coming up beside her, you place a hand on her shoulder and say, “Everything will be fine, okay? You’re going to make your world famous latkes for Bubbie, and she’ll be so proud that you’ve perfected her recipe. And these brownie fritter things - they’ll keep all the kids’ mouths so full they won’t be able to whine even if they want to, leaving their parents to relax and enjoy another amazing Hanukkah at the Perry household. You’ll open presents, have some drinks, stuff yourselves full of every deep fried food imaginable, and have a grand ol’ time.”

There’s still something recalcitrant in her eyes, some element of her that is unwilling to be mollified, but she nods. “I suppose there’s no use worrying about it,” she says, and begins to scoop brownie batter from the bowl in her hands. She works in silence for a moment, forming a little ball of the batter with your hand still on her shoulder, before pausing. Without looking up she says, “I’m glad you’re coming with me.”

Your heart gives a happy little flutter, and you wrap your arm around her shoulders instead. “I’ve never missed a Hanukkah with your family,” you say, giving her a squeeze. “I’m not about to start now.”

“Still. With everything that’s happened…” Her voice trails off and she doesn’t look at you, but her fears are nevertheless plain on her face. She’s spoken to her parents on multiple occasions to remind them of your identity, but they knew you as Susan for almost twenty years. Add to that an array of aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, new wives, new husbands, and - above all -   _grandparents_ who likely won’t understand or will outright reject the notion that you can be anything other than a woman, and the holiday stacks up to be…well, a bit of a challenge, to put it mildly. The thought sobers your normally buoyant humor, but it does nothing to wilt your determination.

“We’ll get through it,” you promise her, and you watch her face as you do. “Together. No matter what anyone else says, we’ll have a great time.”

She offers you a weak little smile and leans into your shoulder. “We always do.”

You finish wrapping the gifts around the same time the fritters are set to cool, and then assist Perry with the latkes. The several dozen you make are then loaded into the hot bags you’d made the year before and given to her as a birthday gift. The material you used was _technically_ copyrighted, but thanks to some research connections you were able to get the formula for it. Provided you didn’t tip them over, the fritters and latkes would both be warm enough to survive the three hour trip home.

One gram of zeolite pellets could, on average, retain up to four times the amount of heat as one litre of water. The safety of the latkes received your LaFontaine guarantee.

Silas’ shuttle bus arrives on time, and you and Perry haul your bags out of the cold air and into the dry, overwhelming heat blasting from its vents. A short ride later sees you both starting a second round of bag-balancing as you haul your holiday supplies across the train station and out onto the cold train platform. You’re the first in your carriage when it finally arrives, and you hurry to claim one of the rows that face each other over a table. With your suitcases packed away overhead, the gifts beside you and the latkes and fritters in the seat beside Perry, you pull out a deck of cards and coax her into a few rounds of War. After all, the trip is scheduled to take you six hours, and the small table doesn’t leave much room for your science equipment; you’d have to pass the time some other way.

A few hours in, as the sun begins to set, you catch Perry staring off out the window as you finish shuffling. This isn’t abnormal - it’s a beautiful sight, snowy foothills stretching into mountains glittering in the bright gold of the winter sun - but the look in her eyes is…off. Distressed. You frown faintly.

“Hey, Perr,” you say and she blinks rapidly, and whatever dark thought that occupied her fades from her eyes. Still, you continue, “Are you okay?”

She offers another weak smile, blinks again, looks away. She opens her mouth, closes it again. You wait for her to speak, as you know she will once she’s sorted out her thoughts, but she surprises you somewhat when she stands. At first you think she’s avoiding answering, that she’s about to go to the bathroom or the dining car or _something_ to put distance between her and your question. Instead she comes around the table, shifts the bag in the seat beside you to the one she left, and situates herself in its place. Curling up with her feet tucked under herself, she settles against your side with her head on your shoulder.

“I’m just. Concerned.” She says carefully. Her eyes don’t close; you can see her lashes move as she blinks, even though her curls obscure the rest of her face. You should be focusing on her words, but you’re taken for a moment by how incredibly _warm_ she is. “Everything used to go so well when we were kids, the food, the party and everything, it was always so perfect and…” She shifts her shoulders, and you hold perfectly still so as not to discourage her from leaning against you again. She does, but not without making a clucking sound that suggested what she was about to say seemed silly. “I don’t know. I just. I feel like I try and I try and it just…ends up mediocre.”

“Oh, Perr,” you sigh, and your hand moves from where it’s pressed between your leg and hers to find her hand. Your fingers slide between hers, and you give them a squeeze. For a moment, you think of the spell-weaving, robes-wearing girl that came to Silas with you last year, and wonder yet again what it was that made that person into this quiet, anxious woman beside you. “Come on, you are the _opposite_ of mediocre. You’re the most spectacular person I know.”

The words might sound hollow, but you mean them with every fibre of your being. You think she understands, because she shifts, lifts her head, and presses a kiss to your cheek. “As long as you think so,” she says softly.

“Please, I’m LaFontaine,” you answer, smiling, and manage to keep your voice its usual teasing tone. There’s absolutely nothing you can do about the blush flooding your face, though. “I don’t think so, I know so.”

* * *

The average human dream can last anywhere from forty-five seconds to half an hour.

When you wake, you are no longer in the close warmth of that train car with the person you care for most in the world cuddled against your side. No, instead you have the corners of dusty old books poking into your ribcage and a cold, musty bookshelf propping up your head. The basement of the old library is a much less desirable scene.

The door to your little room opens, and you realize that it must have been footsteps that woke you. Back after what was probably an eternity - even if your dream _did_ last only forty-five seconds, you’d still had enough time to skim through three of these old biology texts _and_ drift off - Laura steps in with an arm full of packaged snack foods.

“Sorry,” she says, offering a sheepish smile. She looks at you, but doesn’t quite meet your eyes. “I got caught up doing - some, um - stuff.”

Behind her is Carmilla, who saunters in with a few bottles of water and an expression that might as well have had ‘ _I’m the stuff’_ painted across her forehead. You roll your eyes and do your best to quell your frustration, promising that if ever they needed to make another snack machine run, you would be the one doing the running with Laura. You really don’t have time to be messing around here because somewhere, outside these constantly shifting walls, Perry and Jeep are suffering whatever came in the wake of Vordenberg’s demise. Jeep is a vampire and you know he can probably protect himself, but Perry…you grit your teeth, and begin to share with the others what you’d been able to discover in their absence.

Because you _will_ get out of here. Come hell or high water, you would sacrifice everything if it meant you could keep her safe. Because she is anything but average.

**She is your entire world.**

**Author's Note:**

> This is my incredibly late Carmilla Secret Santa gift for @Bethmushroom! Since LaFerry is their favorite ship from the show, I tried my hand at writing the two. This fic was also posted to my tumblr (unchartedcloud.tumblr.com), where I fangirl over all my favorite queer ships. Feel free to stop by, and thanks for reading!


End file.
